


A Fflam, Buoyant

by foxtwin



Category: Chronicles of Prydain - Lloyd Alexander
Genre: Boredom, Castles, Cooking, Gen, Humor, POV First Person, Rats & Mice, Snow and Ice, Snowed In, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-16
Updated: 2010-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:18:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxtwin/pseuds/foxtwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>King Fflewddur Fflam, Son of Godo, gives his staff a well deserved three-day holiday. What could go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fflam, Buoyant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leaper182](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leaper182/gifts).



> Huge thanks & blessings on whetherwoman for her beta of this piece, and htbthomas for a first read-through. Thanks also to my recipient, leaper182, for allowing me to fashion a piece of fiction in honor of Fflewddur Fflam. For additional insights, please see the end note.

The crisp air of mid-winter snapped me, Fflewddur Fflam, from my mid-morning slumber, which is to say that the paunch of morning’s middle was (for me) more or less its beginning. My harp – a gift of the bards at Caer Dathyl and the symbol of my barding – hung securely on a hook on the side of my wardrobe, its strings tuned to perfection, just as they are now in my tale to you.

A bleary-looking sky greeted me two days before Yule, as I sought to pull my cloud-like blanket over my lanky limbs.

“By Belin,” I managed to sigh. “This castle is simply wretched without the company of others. I suppose I had best get myself some food to sustain me if I am to survive the next few days. I do hope visitors will come to call.”

I _would_ have to say this because after returning to my lands from my adventures, I chose to hire some cottagers living near me, which is to say that they volunteered to keep me company during the lonely winters. While I was away, they would make sure that the castle was kept, and during the wintering months they would assist me at court.

I also had, as a matter of principal and a matter of pride, allowed these three – Butler, Armorer, and Cook – to spend a three-day Yule holiday in the relative peace of Prydain’s highlands, which is to say, they were resting peacefully at their homes beyond the fields outside of my bedroom window. Such was the nature of my kingdom – a small but scenic parcel of land I can easily stride between midday and high noon.

Armorer was complaining that holidays in my kingdom were much too short – especially as my harp tends to lead me into countless adventures in the springtime, leaving the three of them to look after my affairs while I am away. “A Fflam is Generous,” I had said to him, so I added two days to the already allotted one for the Yule Festival. When Butler asked whether the days would be added to the beginning or end of the Yule Festival, I pronounced, “A Fflam is Progressive!” and gave everyone the two days prior to Yule as a matter of good will. “A Fflam is also Resourceful,” I had added to Cook’s remark that I might go back on my word and fetch her to do my breakfasts. “I shall stay inside the castle all three days and find sustenance for myself, greet my own guests, and suit myself for battle should the need arise.” So, off they had gone without even a hearty goodbye or fond farewell, which is to say they wore happy smiles as they left the castle to return to their homes beyond the pasture.

My eyes were wide open by now, the shifting winter winds now more clammy and clingy as I tried to hide myself under the warmth of my thick comforter. Doli had been good enough to make it for me, and the uncommon warmth it gave was from Doli’s masterful weaving, for as a rule I stay away from any enchantment of the Fair Folk. Too much trouble, that.

I set my lanky feet gingerly on the floor, testing the flagstones beneath me. A sharp chill raced through my feet and legs, stopping at my knees. Muttering to myself, I managed to wrap Doli's blanket over my shoulders to keep out the chill, adjusting the longer end so that it might just reach the floor. Good old Doli had managed to leave enough blanket to cover me from head to heel, which is to say that my long toes were exposed to the morning’s chill.

I rushed the short distance from my bed to the kitchens in an effort to fix myself a bowl of hot oatmeal. “A Fflam needs his strength on a cold day,” I said to myself. “So I shall make my oatmeal extra hearty. It shall have berries, and nuts, and fruits, and spices fit for a king.” Upon entering the kitchen, however, I realized I had no idea where to begin. The space occupied by the castle’s cook was meticulously arranged. Logs for the fire were bundled and stacked. Shelves were organized and labeled. It was much too, in a word, tidy. Oh, fixing a fire in the woods was all fine and good -- when one is in the woods and the twigs and branches have fallen from the trees and wouldn’t be used by anyone else for the self-same purpose. But in my castle, fixing a fire was hardly the same. The fire logs for the cook ovens, so neatly stacked nearby, made me sigh in defeat. "I can't use Cook’s wood," I said to myself. "That would be stealing, which is to say that if I disturb the stack it will never get back to its right shape again." So I sat in the cold kitchens, pondering ways to relieve the hunger gnawing at my belly.

 Not long after, a small mouse emerged from a hole in the stone castle walls, sniffing and shivering against the cold. I watched it as it sniffed here, then there, for something of interest. A crumb -- smaller than a pin's head -- was no sooner found than gobbled up. For all that I was wrapped up in Doli's blanket, surely the mouse had a grand idea!

I sloughed off Doli’s blanket in anticipation of finding sustenance. I began following the mouse, still looking about the kitchens for something that had been left behind. The mouse soon found its way to a stash of walnuts in a leather satchel that had apparently been overlooked in the cleanup, and had poked its nose into the opening. Not believing my luck, I picked the mouse up and gently set it on the countertop. Opening the satchel further, I picked out three walnuts with my left hand. But what to use as a nutcracker? The door to the kitchens! I quickly brought the nut between door and jamb and gave a soft push. The nut did not budge, but wedged itself into the door’s soft wood. Repeated hammerings of door and jamb produced more damage to the door than the nut. The old proverb about nuts being hard to crack popped in – and promptly out – of my head as thoughts of starvation firmly embedded themselves at the doorstep of my mind.

Throwing the remaining nuts against the walls and flagstones -- more out of frustration than through any scientific process -- did no good either. One nut bounced itself under the kitchen’s utility table, never to be seen again (except perhaps by the more determined mouse, who scurried to safety). Another careened into the corner chamber pot, still fully whole. After a short contemplative bout, in which I reasoned that the cook had surely cleaned the pot out before replacing it, the king in me decided to pick the nut out of the pot hoping that the meat of it had been exposed. My hopes were dashed as I pulled the unbroken nut from its resting place. Cursing my luck, I sought to find an already cracked walnut in the small satchel. I eventually found a nut at the bottom of the satchel that had a cracked shell. But upon opening it, the softer meat was shriveled and dry. A touch of mold had begun to form on the corners of the morsel. The small breakfast I had managed for myself was placed on the utility table, while I replaced the uncracked nuts in the satchel for the cook’s future use.

Unfortunately for me, my search for food had been a boon for the mouse. Having scurried under the table, it had found its way to the tabletop just as I had finished with the satchel. Its cute little paws grabbed the morsel and consumed it. Being a fleet-footed Fflam, I grabbed for the mouse with my long bony fingers, hoping to throttle its tiny neck. But alas I was too late. The mouse raced through the kitchens, along the hearth, under the tables, and out the opened door. “Great Belin!” I cried as I followed it relentlessly into the greater portions of the castle. “A mouse shall be a King’s breakfast!”

The wreck made of the kitchens, with pots strewn throughout the room, the door of the kitchen unhinged through violence, the broken flagstones where hanging iron pans had fallen here and there, I ignored for the glory of the moment. To my mind, the battle was on – and the mouse was my mortal enemy. But the mouse, smaller and faster, squeezed its way out of my castle, which is to say it crawled under the front door of the castle.

“A Fflam never despairs,” I said, dropping to my knees after chasing the mouse to no avail. "Oh," cried I aloud. "What I wouldn't give for Gurgi's crunchings and munchings!" But if I had hoped that Gurgi's face might miraculously appear with gobs of goodies, the fantasy evaporated at the sound of my stomach's repeated rumblings. Resolving in my heart to continue the search for food, I retrieved my blanket from the kitchens and walked myself back to my bed chamber. I was hardly tired, and the sight of my bed gave me little comfort knowing that the fields might yet hold some promise of grain beyond the doors of my castle.

Shutting the windows and barring them against the coldness helped warm my body enough to shuffle off my bed clothes and don more regal attire -- a jerkin, some breeches, stockings, and a vest. My crown – the symbol of majesty – was lifted to its proper place, which is to say it was left to hang on a hook in my wardrobe. I reached for my winter traveling cloak and reached the threshold of the castle when the wicked whacking of wind stopped me short.

“Great Belin! I can’t leave my castle! I promised Cook I’d stay indoors until she returned. If she sees me, she may never cook for me again!” This thought caused my blood to chill, which is to say I shut the door just as quickly as I’d opened it for fear she would see me. The hunger I was feeling overwhelmed me, so I sought something to divert my attention.

I found a comfortable chair and began thinking of ways I might entertain myself within the confines of these castle walls. Games, I reasoned, were always fun – especially when the children visited. The usual games, such as hide-and-seek and tagging, could not be played alone. And inviting the children to play seemed to also go against the rule Cook had set for me.

I eventually settled on hop-scotch and promptly took a piece of writing charcoal from my side table and began to trace the outlines of a hop-scotch onto the flagstones of my room. My ambition was to create the longest, most complex hop-scotch track in the kingdom, which is to say the longest I had ever played – a 24-square hop-scotch. “A Fflam is ambitious!” I remarked to myself. “If the previous total was 24, we shall make it 48, today!”

I used up my vast collection of writing charcoals, which is to say 12 of them, in creating the hop-scotch track. It necessarily emerged from the bedchamber into the main hall and routed itself past the armory and kitchen to end directly in front of the storage room. Choosing to grab the broken walnut shell from the kitchen as a token, I began by tossing the shell onto the first square, then hopping the length of the track on one leg. That is to say I alternated legs on each hop before reversing course. On the eighth toss, I discovered that hop-scotch is best played without a winding track; such a track made tossing the token terribly tedious, as the token would be unable to turn corners. I ran my hands through my regal hair in contemplative thought, which is to say that my royal hair likely needed extensive grooming.

“A Fflam is inventive!” I reassured myself, and quickly set out to find odds and ends that might help me accomplish the task. A contraption consisting of an old smoking pipe given to me by one of the Fair Folk (I had never tried smoking myself), one of Cook’s frying pans, and a never-used coat rack were assembled and successfully tested in the course of the afternoon. The resulting contraption was successfully maneuvered throughout the castle as I tossed and hopped, which is to say it successfully allowed me to navigate the four curves of the serpentine track.

The winter sun waned, and the halls of the castle began to darken. The hop-scotch game, I realized, had occupied a great deal of my time that afternoon. And with the darkening came the realization that the castle’s sconces needed lighting. My butler’s absence forced me to leave off my hopscotch for more illuminating duties, which is to say I had to find matches for the castle’s candles.

The butler’s quarters are near the top of the castle’s stairwell. Navigating in dusky darkness up an enclosed stairwell, I managed to find and enter the butler’s chambers. I noted a flint box right away. Having worked with such when away from my kingdom, I managed to make my way down the stairwell with the flint box. By that time, however, the halls had darkened further. Managing to find the sconces became a game more of hide than seek.

Hunger returned as I stumbled and bumbled my way to my bed chamber, which is to say I had bruises from the constant tripping and bumping. I managed to light the sconce beside my bed, which is to say it was the only sconce I lit that first night. Sleep came mercifully.

I must pause here for some dramatic effect, as the chill winds during that first night were tempered by Doli’s fine blanket. So you’ll understand how surprised I was in waking up. It wasn’t so much that I noticed anything strange right away, which is to say I did not notice it at all at first. Rather, I had woken up and was about to dress myself warmly in my winter jerkin and vestments so I could clean up the mess I made in the kitchens – and perhaps uncover something to eat that Cook had already prepared. Thoughts of sausage and eggs with warm toast and cheese filled my head. I shuffled off the blankets and planted my feet firmly on the ground, for a Fflam is surefooted. The remarkable thing about my firm feet is how un-firm they are on ice. This Fflam had indeed set his foot surely on what amounted to ice glazing the flagstones, as if my bedchamber had become a pond during the night. My feet slipped out from under me and I went for a spill.

“Great Belin!” I cried. “This castle has turned into an ice pond!”

Now, I am usually a fond admirer of wintertime, with its mounds of snow and frozen ice ponds – capital to play with and skate on. But when snow comes through the windows, and then drips onto the floor to make an ice pond of a castle’s insides, why, a Fflam’s sure feet are not amused!

As I got up again onto less treacherous flagstones, I recognized the source of my calamity was rampant, as every window shutter had snow pushing through it. Ice was everywhere. It was the invisible enemy within my castle, and it had to be slain. That is to say, if a worthy weapon could be found to slay it.

The surest way to melt ice is by building a fire, which was of course out of the question. So, it occurred to me the only way to dissolve the flat, slippery menace was to break it. But with what would I break it? This was the ponderous question.

I looked through all of my belongings for something that might do. I had thought to use my harp to break the ice, but then thought better of it and left the poor thing hanging on its hook. There was my walking stick. But if anything happened to it, I would be sorely missing a good, faithful friend.

Scrounging in the attics, I managed to find just the thing. It was long, metallic, and rarely used, which is to say in my kingdom it was never used at all. The scepter of Godo Fflam, long ago abandoned by him at his death and conveniently stored for safe keeping, served my purpose well.

I began hammering on the ice ponds throughout the castle with my father’s scepter. At first, the ice – that sinister evil – gave keen resistance. Godo’s scepter bounced back without any progress. But the more I hammered, the more enemy ice broke and succumbed to the wrath of a Fflam!

I set to work breaking ice and putting the pieces into a pitcher, for a Fflam was also hungry and thirsty! And when the ice melted, perhaps some of it would nourish me. A Fflam is not proud when survival is at stake.

Once cleared of ice, the flagstones within my own walls became safe to tread. But I soon saw the work was barely done, for the snow had drifted onto the window sills and had pushed through the shutters. If the snow was not cleared, ice would continue to form on a Fflam’s flagstone floor. Despite the growing gnaw of hunger from two days without food, I threw open the shutters and gave that snow what little Gurgi would have called royal “whackings and smackings.” Yes, a Fflam is diligent. With each whack the snow fell to the ground below. With each smack, hardened ice was dislodged from the wood and stone frame of my windows. I went along my castle walls that day opening shutters and smiting the snow, cursing it with each blow. Then, reclosing the shutters, I would march to the next and the next. By the end of midday, the drifted snow had retreated to the bowels of the earth, which is to say it no longer graced my windowsills.

The work of pummeling snow and saving one’s castle from the icy tendrils of winter can certainly make one hungry! I resolved then and there to scour my castle for any morsel of food I might find, be it vegetable, animal, or mineral. Yes, I must admit even the prospect of eating dried pieces of wood and small rocks was beginning to sound like a banquet. And, since I knew the kitchen held a whole stack of wood, it was just the place to begin my search. After all, this was where I had encountered the walnuts. Perhaps now with Godo’s scepter, I could smash enough of them  to make a meager meal.

No sooner had I returned to the kitchens, I noticed the pots, pans and other debris that littered the floor. It was enough to make a Fflam’s heart break. The only way to save it from breaking was to clean up the mess, which I promptly began. And while I would love to explain just how I was able to get the kitchens into the pristine condition they are now in, that would be another story altogether. That is to say, I cannot recall all of the finer details just at the moment.

As I was repairing the final dented pot, I heard the squeak of a mouse. This brought me to my senses, and back to the reason I had come to the kitchens in the first place – a meal of smashed walnuts – and further recalled the painful hunger that gripped me enough to have chased a mouse just yesterday. Had I known it was the same mouse, I might have ignored it. However, the prospect of meat – raw though it might have been – ended up in the foremost parts of my mind. The mouse must have had the same feelings, for as it looked at me I sensed that it was wondering when I would pounce upon it like a cat.

Both of us – Fflam and Mouse – stood looking at one another for what seemed an eternity, which is to say that this staring was done in a matter of moments.

The great dented pot was still in my hand. I reasoned I could use the pot to catch the mouse. I slowly, carefully adjusted the pot so that I could cover the mouse with it, like a child catching a butterfly on a flower with a net. The mouse stood still, its whiskers twitching, its feet unmoving. I slowly, slowly lowered myself and the pot, waiting for the right moment to capture my prey. As I lowered myself even further, my heart began pounding more rapidly. The mouse must have heard the thumping, for it shot itself between my legs and out into the greater part of the castle. I wasted no time in following the mouse through the castle. By the route which the mouse took, I soon came to recognize the route that I had traveled just the day before. A Fflam is Clever! Recognizing that the mouse must be the same one from the day before, I quickly made my way to the front door and set myself and my pot as a trap to capture this rodent. Sure enough, only moments later the mouse began racing toward the door, ready to sneak itself under the doorway, when it reared up and bounded off in yet another direction. A Fflam is Fleet-Footed, and I tore after it as best I could, which is to say I was out of breath within sight of it squirming under another, less used doorway. My shoulders slumped; my belly ached with hunger. But a Fflam is Persistent – especially when prodded by painful hunger pangs. I soldiered ahead, opened the door, and found myself on a darkened stairwell leading to the dungeons below. I plunged myself into the darkness. What first met my senses was not light, but scent. A slight, but distinctively savory smell skirted softly up my nose and into my hunger-starved head. Sausages?

Sausages!

I followed the scent. And bumped my head into an entire row of sausages hanging from the low dungeon ceiling. Using what strength I had left, I yanked one down and gnawed at the strings that bound it until I was able to sink my teeth into the glorious meat. I ate five sausages then and there, my mouth watering, which is to say I was also able to find some wine and a round of cheese to wash them all down.

By the time my meal was finished, the sky had darkened and I was left groping around the dungeons once used by my father, Godo, for harboring evil-doers and unruly commoners. That is to say he never had to use it at all, just as I have had no need for it. But apparently Cook had found a way to use it, and thankful I am for that.

The next day was the Yule Festival, and I found myself decorating the castle and looking about the dungeon to see whatever else Cook might have stashed there. I found a ham, three bottles of wine, nine salami sausages, twelve rounds of cheese, and a very frightened mouse!

Where the mouse is now, I cannot tell you. Which is to say, I have no idea where it is. But it has saved my life, and also allowed us to celebrate Yuletide with the bounty stored up by Cook for just such occasions. So, as you raise your glasses of wine, ale, and eggnog for the new year, remember the benefits of having a mouse in your house. Cheers. 

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was intended to bring two ideas by the recipient into one: Firstly, that Fflewddur should be cooped up in his castle all alone (and have to deal with his boredom), and secondly that he be able to spin a somewhat unbelievable yarn in which his harp does not snap strings. I can only hope I have done these ideas justice. Happiness to all readers for the new year!


End file.
